THE USE OF A + PERSONAL PRONOUN IN OLD SPANISH

Abstract

The construction a + disjunctive personal pronoun is found frequently in mediaeval Spanish texts where the conjunctive pronoun would be more usual in modern Spanish. Moreover, the content of the strong pronoun is not usually reiterated in Old Spanish as a pleonastic weak pronoun object. We find, then, Oíd a mí (Cid 616), A vos digo (Cid 2197), where in a more modern period we should expect either Oídme, Os digo or, if there is definite emphasis, Oídme a mí, A vosotros os digo. Both these characteristics were noted by Gessner in his celebrated article of 1893 (ZRPh XVII, 25–26) and both have been restated by other scholars.

BSS Subject Index:

• SPAIN — LANGUAGES — SPANISH LANGUAGE & ITS HISTORY — MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Notes

¹RMP, Cantar (Madrid 1908) 321 ; F. Hanssen, Gram. hist. (Halle 1913) 198 ; C. C. Harden, Libro de A polonio, II (Princeton 1922) 10–11; S. Fernández, Gram- esp. (Madrid 1951) 211 N. 2 ; V. García de Diego, Gram. hist. esp. (Madrid 1951) 319–21 ; K. M. Martínez Amador, Dicc. gram. (Barcelona 1954) 1217.

²My findings are based on the following texts : Cid—Cantar de Mio Cid, ed. RMP (Madrid 1946) ; Auto—Auto de los Reyes Magos, ed. RMP, in RABM IV (1900) 453–62 ; LibReg—Liber Regum, ed. M. Serrano y Sanz, in BRAE VI (1919) 194–215 ; RAm—Razón de Amor, con los Denuestos del Agua y el Vino, ed. RMP, in RH XIII (1905) 608–18; SME— Vida de Santa Maria Egipciaqua, [ed. R. Foulché-Delbosc] (Barcelona 1907) ; Mil.—Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora, ed. A. G. Solalinde (Madrid 1922) ; Apol—Libro de Apolonio, ed. C. C. Marden (Baltimore 1917) ; Alex—Libro de Alexandre (MS. O, stanzas 1–1,000) ed. R. S. Willis (Princeton 1934) ; FGlz—Poema de Fernán González, ed. RMP, in Reliquias de la poesía épica española (Madrid 1951) 34–153 ; Salas—Los Siete Infantes de Salas, ed. RMP, in Reliquias … (Madrid 1951) 181–98 ; Calila—Calila y Dimna, ed. J. Alemany (Madrid 1915) 1–100 ; Zifar—El Cavallcro Zifar, ed. M. de Riquer (Barcelona 1951) I, 21–125.

¹For reservations on this generalization, however, see the RAE Gramática, 9th ed. (Madrid 1924), §474e; A. Bello, Gram. de la leng. cast., 4th ed. (Buenos Aires 1954), §§ 919. 945, 946 ; S. Gili y Gaya, Curso superior de sint. esp., 4th ed. (Barcelona 1954), §§ 172. 174; E. M. Martínez Amador, Dicc. gram. (Barcelona 1954), 1217. I shall return to this point in my final paragraphs.

¹Here it may be objected that none of these pronouns belongs to this section ; the first two are emphatic, the third one avoids the combination me vos, and the fourth is selective. My choice of the passage is intentional : to show how other uses of the disjunctive pronoun, too, may become impregnated with the exaltative quality that is the pronoun's most common feature. The juglar could very well have avoided strong pronouns altogether in these lines, but he uses them in such (relative) profusion that one feels there must have been some general unifying motivation, presumably exaltative. In this respect one can consider also vss. 3285–8 ; “ No one ”, says the Cid to his enemy Garci Ordóñez, “ has taken me by the beard ”,

“ commo yo a vos, comde, en el castiello de Cabra

quando pris a Cabra, e a vos por la barba.” One is surely meant to feel the Count writhing under the insult, under the ironic juxtaposition of the repeated exaltative a vos and the forced recollection of his humiliation. Again the examples do not really belong to this section, for the verb is understood, but the juglar was not forced to use disjunctive pronouns : he could very well have written commo yo lo fiz in the first line and e pris os in the second. Being a great artist he did not, for the loss in evocative power would have been considerable.

¹One of the examples referred to above (RAm 120) was included in Section 1, Note 1, as a minority case, together with Mil 496b, Cid 878, Alex 753c and Liblieg 211.30. Mil 496b refers to the Virgin, Cid 878 and Alex 753c to kings or overlords, and these examples, like RAm 120, might therefore have been placed more appropriately in the present section. Only LibReg 211.30 seems properly classified and there the disjunctive would presumably have been encouraged to distinguish the transitive acullie a ssi from the reflexive acullie ssc. In similar fashion, the two apparently exceptional examples listed in Section I, Note 4, might also have been better listed in Section VI ; the first is a self-exaltative a nos ; the second refers to an influential churchman (cf. Cid 256, 1796 ; Mil 64c).

²(a) Cid 230, 1362, 1480, 2231, 2941, 3451, 3560; Mil 46b, 335c, 505b, 843b, 802C ; Apol 383c, 421a, 502c, 533a ; FGlz 415a, 580a, 643c. (b) A few other examples cannot be classified in any of the six sections established ; Cid 3285; Mil 901b; Apol 240b; Alex 383d; Calila 20.7,65.15 ; Zifar 33.31, 51.1 (cf. Bello, Gram., §§ 941, 945, 946). The following is the only example I have noted of an explicative dis-junctive : Qnisol besar las manos, ca lo devie fer ;/Mas êl non gelas quiso a ella ofrecer (Mil 547cd).

¹Even where there would be some emotive gain, other elements at times crowd in (as they rarely do in prose) to make the conjunctive pronoun preferable : grandes yentes sele acogen essa noch de todas partes (Cid 395).

²Cf. the Celestina (ed. R. Foulché-Delbosc, Barcelona 1900) :—Pármeno to Celestina … te me dio mi madre [=me to you] (30.14) ; Celestina to Pármeno : tu madre … te me dio [=you to me] (31.1).

¹(Gili y Gava, who does attempt an explanation, suggests that cases of the type a mi me parece “ fueron enfáticos cuando se crearon, pero que hoy se repiten como frases hechas, sin que nos propongamos insistir particularmente en el pronombre ” (Sint. esp., § 172 ; the same point is made again in § 174). It would appear from my investigations that no such chrono logical distinction can be made.

²H. Meier, “Sobre as origens do acusativo preposicional nas línguas românicas”, in Ensaios de filologia românica (Lisbon 1948) 115–64.

³See, however, S. Fernández, Gram, esp., 180.N. 4, for the occasional use of an accusative disjunctive without a.

¹On the other hand, some of the explanations Meier offers of the origin of this first stage are open to doubt, at least as far as Spanish is concerned. Thus, pleonasm of the type me … a mi that Meier considers important as a source of wk. pron.—str. pron. Contamination (135–37) was still relatively rare when a + disjunctive pronoun was fully established. More over, I have found only one example of the use of a third-person explicative disjunctive (above, p. 50, N. 2(b)) so that Meier's distinction between first- and second-person emphatic disjunctives on the one hand and third-person explicative disjunctives on the other (p. 137) docs not appear to be significant in the early period of the language. Finally, to step for a moment outside my present field, if Meier's explanation of the accusative a mi, a ti is correct, it seems necessary to attribute the accusative a él to an analogical extension on the model of these cases (together with the desire for a nominative—accusative distinction sug gested on p. 125 of Meier's study).

²“ Mas para ‘ amar a Deus ‘ chama a nossa atenção o facto de que esta forma não só aparece no Português e, como já vimos, no Reto-romano, mas também na Itália do Sul e na Sardenha” (op. cit. 159–60).

³Meier himself emphasizes that disjunctive pronouns were in fact personal pronouns (p. 126). In the texts I have examined there is only one example of a non-personal accusa tive disjunctive : FGlz 580a (see above, p. 50).